"Have you made him your animal to call?" Micah asked.
Asher scowled at Micah, and his ice-blue eyes flashed with a hint of glow, a hint of vampire power. "I do not have to answer your question, cat."
"Fine, then answer it for me," I said.
He gave me an unfriendly look. "No, no I have not done what Narcissus so terribly wants. I have not made him my animal to call, but if I would, and if I would come to his bed as he wants, then he is willing to leave St. Louis and go where I go."
I didn"t know what to say to that. Micah said, "Narcissus must love you a great deal to be willing to leave a safe city and fight for control somewhere else."
Asher laughed, and as Jean-Claude"s laughter could be sensual and s.e.xy, Asher"s laugh held sorrow as if the light dimmed. My heart hurt for a moment. "I"m not certain Narcissus is capable of truly loving anyone, but he wants me. He wants me badly enough that he would destroy everything he has built if only I will be his in every way."
The conversation had the feel of something that had been talked about a lot, but it was totally news to me. I looked at Jean-Claude and said what I was thinking. "How long have you known about Narcissus"s offer?"
"Long enough," he said.
"And you were going to mention this when?"
"He couldn"t tell you," Asher said, "because that would have forced him to tell you the reason I want to leave, and that is a conversation he does not want to have, is it, mon bellot mon bellot? Ah, but then you are not my pretty one, are you, not anymore?"
"What"s that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"It means that if I cannot be loved, then I want the respect due me as a master vampire with his own animal to call."
"I"m still lost here, guys, explain," I said.
"I want a formal greeting," Asher said.
"We are all friends here, mon ami mon ami," Jean-Claude said.
"No, no we are not all friends here," Asher said. "I am either a master vampire or your second-in-command or I am not. If I am all those things, then it is within my rights to demand a formal greeting from everyone in the room."
"I don"t think this is J.J."s business," Jason said.
We all looked at him. I wasn"t sure what I would have said, but Jean-Claude said, "You are quite right. She is your guest and this does not concern her."
"I"ll be right back after I get her settled," he said, and he led her away to the other side of the curtains and the hallway beyond. She was asking him questions as they walked, her voice low and serious. He just shook his head.
"What do you mean, you want a formal greeting from everyone in the room? That"s what we have to do for out-of-town guests or other dominants and masters. We don"t do that to each other."
Asher looked at me and with the hair fallen over one half of his face, and all that blue silk, he was all beautiful arrogance, but I knew that was one of the emotions he hid behind. He"d come to us with that as his shield when he was afraid something would hurt too much.
It made me look over the guards" heads to the painting above the mantel that the whole room had been designed around. It was a picture of Jean-Claude and Asher, and their dead Julianna, back when everyone dressed like they"d stepped out of Dumas"s Three Musketeers Three Musketeers.
The Asher in the painting was all gold and white perfection with Juliana sitting in front of him, and Jean-Claude behind them both, in his signature black and white even then. The Asher in that painting was unscarred, and the artist had captured the arrogance I was looking at now.
"When you say everyone in the room? Do you actually mean everyone?" I asked.
"I do," he said.
"Jean-Claude?" I said.
"We are an informal lot here, but he is within his rights as a master to be greeted formally at every entrance," Jean-Claude said.
"The formal greeting is a kind of p.i.s.sing contest," I said. "We don"t have to do that with just each other."
"I thought we did not," he said, and his face was empty, telling me nothing. s.h.i.t.
I turned back to Asher. "You"re seriously going to make all of us do this."
"Yes," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I can."
I stared at him for a moment, and then said, "Fine, fine, how do we do this?"
"Whoever sees me as dominant to them can greet me, and whoever feels they are dominant or equal to me, well, we shall see."
"See what?" I asked.
Micah answered, "See who offers up their flesh and blood."
"The greeting is just a formality," I said. "The submissive offers up a blood point, the vampire or wereanimal sniffs or kisses it, and we move on."
"That is not always the case, ma pet.i.te ma pet.i.te," Jean-Claude said.
"What else is there?" I asked.
"You know that some vampires use it as a way of trying their power one against the other."
"Yes, I"ve seen that."
"The ritual is an offering of blood. The dominant, or master, is within his rights to take what is offered. That is how it was originally done centuries ago. The master would pick one of the offerings and feed, and by offering to be submissive to him you give him the right to choose to feed."
"That is not how we"ve done it when we"ve had visiting masters from out of town," I said.
"Asher is invoking his rights, and that is within his rights." Jean-Claude motioned and the guards moved so the two vampires could see each other. "Isn"t that what you mean to do?"
"Yes," he said, and there was nothing pleasant in his voice.
"I feel like we"ve stepped into a fight that I don"t know anything about. If we"re offering up our flesh and blood, then I want to know why."
"You only offer it up if you see me as dominant to you, Anita, and you don"t."
I frowned at him, then turned back to Jean-Claude. "Help me out here. What does that mean?"
"He means that you only offer blood point to him if you see yourself as lesser than Asher. If you don"t think he is your superior, then you don"t offer blood, and you could insist he offer flesh or blood to you."
I shook my head and turned to Micah and Nathaniel. "Is this a surprise to both of you, too?"
They both nodded, but Micah said, "Asher has been getting pushier."
"Like trying to steal a kiss at the recital," I said.
Micah nodded.
I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and said, "Asher, don"t do this, just talk to me."
"Your master has forbidden me to bring up certain topics. He has left me few avenues to demonstrate my displeasure, but the ways he has left open to me I will now take. I want to know where everyone in this room stands. I want to know where I stand with everyone in this room, and I want to know now."
"Jean-Claude, just tell him he can talk to me about whatever it is. If we start this kind of dominance thing with our own people, it"s going to go all pear-shaped."
"Guards, leave us."
"I"m not sure that"s a good idea," Truth said.
"I am sure," Claudia said, "it"s a bad idea."
"We need to discuss some very personal issues. You are not privy to them, now go."
Claudia and Truth looked at me. Fredo and Wicked kept the vampires in their line of sight, which wasn"t easy since they were across from each other, but the men managed.
"Don"t look at her," Asher said. "Your master has told you to leave. Didn"t you hear him?"
"He"s not my master," Claudia said. "I just work here."
"He is ours," Wicked said.
"No," Truth said, "he"s not."
The brothers looked at each other and then both of them looked at me. I got a hint of maybe what Asher was meaning. "If Jean-Claude says go, go. We"ll be all right."
"Bad idea," Claudia said.
"Very bad idea," Fredo said.
"I trust Jean-Claude and I trust Asher."
That earned me a look from Asher that wasn"t arrogant or hostile. It was almost a pained look, and then he was back to being gorgeous and unreadable.
The guards started to move toward the curtains in the direction that Jason and J.J. had gone. Asher called out, "Perses, Dares, I want you to stay."
The two werehyenas hesitated. It was the shorter, dark one, Perses, who said, "We"re hired to guard Jean-Claude and his people."
"I"m not talking about who signs your paychecks," Asher said. "I"m talking about who is your master in this room."
"Don"t do this," Micah said, and that one sentence let me know he"d seen some danger that I was still oblivious to.
"Will you come over here and offer up your neck to me, leopard king?" Asher asked.
Nathaniel moved in front of Micah. "I will."
"And you are tasty, mon minet mon minet, but I know you will not fight me. You and I have no quarrel about dominance."
Micah took his arm and pulled him back. "This isn"t about s.e.x; it"s about power, Nathaniel. He wants me to acknowledge him as more powerful."
"There were other things I wanted from you, Micah, but wasn"t it Machiavelli who said, "It is better to be loved than feared, but if you cannot be loved, then fear will do." Well, you don"t love me, so I will settle."
"You are not doing all this just because I don"t like boys," Micah said.
Asher laughed again, and this one hurt, as if the sound of it had bits of gla.s.s to rend the skin. It was an illusion, a vampire power, and I should have been proof against it; that I wasn"t meant that Asher had grown in power since last he"d tried s.h.i.t like this.
"When I believed that I let it go, but I saw you tonight at the dance. I saw you with your kitten, and you like him well enough."
"Wait, are you doing all this because you think Micah is . . . doing Nathaniel, but not you? That"s such a girl reason for a fight."
"No, it"s not," Asher said. "It"s a very male reason for a fight. A man"s ego can only take so much rejection, Anita."
"Oh my G.o.d," Micah said.
Again he was ahead of me. "What? What did you figure out that I haven"t?"
Micah looked at Jean-Claude. "You sleep in the same bed with him almost every night. We find you naked together dead to the world during the day when none of us are with you. Are you really telling me that you and he aren"t-"
"Aren"t what?" I asked.
Nathaniel answered, "Lovers."
"What?" I asked.
"They aren"t lovers."
"Who aren"t lovers?"
"Jean-Claude and Asher," Nathaniel said.
I turned and looked at Jean-Claude. I just looked at him. "Are you telling me that even when I"m not with you, you"re still not . . ."
"No, he"s not," Asher said, "and when I say not not, I mean not anything anything. He thinks that if you came into the room and caught us doing it, it would distress you." Since that could be a long list, I just stared at Asher.
Asher laughed, and this one was almost ordinary. "Look at their faces, Jean-Claude; our nearest and dearest all thought we were together as of old."
I turned to Jean-Claude. "Are you saying that you"ve had him in our bed, in your bed, naked all this time and you still haven"t . . . been, oh, h.e.l.l, you aren"t completely lovers?"
"And what would you have done if you walked in on us being lovers, ma pet.i.te ma pet.i.te?"
"I"d have been a lot less upset than if I caught you with another woman," I said.